Williams relishes rebuilding project

Tar Heels have to start from scratch after NCAA title season, writes Skip Myslenski.

November 28, 2005|By Skip Myslenski.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — He looks so placid, so professorial sitting behind his desk. But looks can deceive about North Carolina coach Roy Williams.

Some years ago, when he was coaching at Kansas, his wife, Wanda, was asked, "What era would you like to live in if not the present?"

"I'm not sure about me," she replied. "But I'm sure Roy would say back in the Wild West."

"That's true," Williams said later with a smile. "Not that I would have been a gunslinger necessarily. But I would like to have been John Wayne's sidekick."

Another anecdote about Williams: During the Big 12 tournament one year, he was asked how competitive his Jayhawks would be since they already had secured an NCAA tournament bid.

"That's not going to be a problem," he said. "If I'm playing golf and you tell me that I'm going to die when I step off the 18th green, I'm still going to try to make that last putt."

A block of granite rests beneath Williams' velvet veneer, a combativeness that is as much a part of him as his genteel manner. He can be, as Wayne was in so many of his movies, a perfect gentleman when at ease. But, again like Wayne, he is transformed when challenged.

Williams and his Tar Heels meet Illinois on Tuesday night in a feature presentation of the Big Ten-ACC Challenge.

The Tar Heels lost the top seven scorers from the team that defeated the Illini in last April's national championship game.

They return just one player who scored in that game--forward David Noel, who made a free throw.

They are the first defending champions to enter the season unranked since 1988. They are starting over, down to nine scholarship players and dependent on five freshmen.

But guiding them is Williams, who in 17 seasons has never failed to take an eligible team to the NCAA tournament. Does he have any idea what will happen this season?

"None," he says.

How does that leave him feeling?

"I've never tried to operate crisis management," he says. "I've been one of those organized guys. So it's not an easy feeling. It's an unpleasant feeling.

"But it's exciting, no question about that. The unknown, some people relish the unknown, some people are frightened by the unknown. I don't think I'd classify myself as either. It's just that we don't know, and I'm looking forward to it."

He looks forward to it even as he faces a daunting reconstruction project that has forced him to assume varied roles. He must be a patient teacher, guiding his young group through fundamentals as basic as a fast break, and he must be a bulwark in the face of dire predictions.

"You've got to talk about the mental part of it," he says. "`Hey, we're going to be OK. Don't worry. We're going to be OK.'"

He must transform Noel and junior Reyshawn Terry, his most experienced returnees, from bit players into stars, and he must persuade his freshmen that they, too, can handle a new and bigger stage.

"Mentally they've got to understand, `Last year we were playing Brother Rice and now we're playing Duke, but we're going to be OK. We're strong as a team,'" he says.

He must infuse all his Tar Heels with proper habits and, bereft of an experienced star, he must even be their security blanket.

"We don't have that presence [that Patriots quarterback Tom] Brady takes into the huddle, that Joe Montana took into the huddle," Williams says.

"Tiger Woods always knows that he's done it. These guys have never done it on the biggest stage. We have the U.S. Open when North Carolina's playing Duke, Maryland, [N.C.] State."

The Tar Heels, as defending champs and one of their sport's most storied programs, have that no matter whom they play. They opened the season by rallying to defeat Gardner-Webb, then followed that with a 57-point rout of Cleveland State and a 17-point victory over UC Santa Barbara.

Now come the Illini, clearly their biggest test yet. But this is just the kind of crunch that stirs Williams.

Back in 1988, when he succeeded Larry Brown and took over unranked Kansas, the Jayhawks surprised everyone by ripping off 13 wins in their first 14 games. Now he is reflecting on a similar challenge.

"We're not going to be as bad as people think, and I like that part," Williams says. "I've always said the greatest place in the world to be is be the underdog when you're going to be pretty darn good."